Traveling Together, Alone
Breaking down the spectatorial performance of travel TikToks AKA What I Thought About A Lot on My Japan Honeymoon!!
I spent two weeks in October traveling around Japan for my honeymoon, where I walked many miles each day and pooped approximately 3 times. It was blissful. Leading up the trip, I joked that I had trained my TikTok algorithm to show me almost exclusively Japan content by searching phrases like “kyoto best coffee” on average 4 times a day. (Related, I spent September working on curbing my screen time to minimal success…)
I watched dozens if not hundreds of travel vlogs, mostly on TikTok, by creators of varying levels of success describe in detail their Japan adventures – from the yakitori they devoured to the apps that made their travel that much more convenient. Patterns of language and content emerged. “Must-see”, “can’t-miss”, “best kept secret” were plastered on video title cards, enticing me to click. In turn, I created Google Maps lists and crafted an optimized itinerary. My trained algorithm was to leap out of my phone and navigate us through a country half way across the world. For the most part, it was incredibly helpful, though it soon became clear that we’d find tonkatsu equally as “life-changing” at a number of spots, not just the one that required waiting in an hour long TikTok-hyped line.
As a funny side note, before the trip, I was talking with my friend James about my planning method and he admitted he got sucked into a similar algorithmic vortex while mapping out a recent trip to Italy. He’d watch video after video of vloggers exalt the virtues of specific trattorias or beaches and feel an urgent need to add it to his to-do list. But then out of curiosity, he searched what such vloggers were saying New York City’s “can’t miss” spots were. All he needed to see was a 23 year old (no offense) proclaim that you “must” go to Two Boots pizza to be able to release himself from the grip of the hype.
When visiting the hot spots that these vloggers, along with more established travel guides, touted, it was almost impossible to not get clocked in the head with a selfie stick. I was also lucky to travel this summer to Barcelona and some other spots in the Mediterranean through a gig on a cruise line and was also struck (not literally, but again, almost literally!) by how many people were filming themselves with selfie sticks, tripods, and phone stabilizers.
Obviously all of the people filming these travel TikToks that I watched on end the last few months had to literally film them somehow, but seeing the production in action was severely jarring. What I really couldn’t get over was how energetically sequestered they were from the spaces they were taking up. Walking through the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest — a spot that really makes the argument for Kyoto’s overtourism woes — I had to weave around at least 5 or 6 people either filming themselves or being filmed looking up in awe at the towering bamboo shoots. They were strategically positioned to look as alone as possible, while clusters of fellow tourists patiently waited to pass them by. It was a spectatorial performance for an audience of online followers, eager like I had been to take in these sights through their eyes.
So much of travel media and the appeal of travel in general hinges on the fantasy of discovery. These content creators are just the latest iteration of people crafting that illusion. At one point, I watched a young woman in front of Asakusa’s Underground Street film multiple takes of an impassioned monologue into her phone propped up by a tripod, dripping with the fluency of TikTok-specific hand gestures and facial expressions. I parsed out the layers of the illusion — there she was alone, speaking into a phone that would ultimately connect her to other people, probably also alone, who would watch her talk about this “can’t-miss” attraction. Her body was turned away from the throngs of people entering the street. Ticking this to-do off your list theoretically welcomes you into an echelon of well-traveled people, though in reality it was a completely solo experience. Watching it felt like getting an eagle eye view of a fun house mirror — a visual deception of community that in actuality is a single person mirrored back onto themselves over and over again.
When I look back on the TikToks I watched and saved leading up to the trip, it’s abundantly clear how repetitive they are. The same spots are recommended over and over. The same shots are captured at the same angles. Still, the soft upward gaze, the subject being filmed from behind as they languidly walk through a space, all make it seem like they’re the first to ever do it.
What’s more is that undoubtedly the best parts of our trip were the un-curated encounters with strangers or random spots we stumbled across outside of the algorithm’s grip. We met a lovely restaurant owner who told us about Stevie Wonder visiting his spot and returning to play a private concert there after dinner. Our very generous taxi driver laughed for about 3 minutes straight after we told him our plans to stay at a Buddhist monastery, leading us to all break out in maniacal laughter, definitely unsure of if we were being made fun of or not. One morning in Magome, we spent breakfast talking to an 82 year old man, Ito, hiking the entirety of the Nakasendo trail. We learned about his goal to finish the trail and how his friend decided to walk ahead of him and we told him how it was our honeymoon and where' we’d been in the country so far. He also laughed at our monastery plans — again, unsure of the implications behind our choice to stay there (it was lovely fwiw!!! still not sure what all the laughter was about!!!) We struggled through translation errors at a pace so un-engaging that no algorithm would have rewarded it. Those moments more than any mind-blowing ramen spots made the trip as memorable as it was and I’m hoping I can remember that next time I spend hours trying to craft a near-perfect itinerary.
Thanks for reading this recap — especially considering it has been awhile since I’ve published anything on this Substack. Hoping to change that and write here more regularly. In the meantime, if you’re interested in reading some of my recent writing, here’s two links: